The facts below do not decide the genre. The promise does. Choose a genre, then choose what evidence you carry, how much of the paper is I, and what the last paragraph does — and see whether the piece you have assembled keeps its promise. Underneath, turn a diary entry into a reflection one move at a time.
The shared material
3:40 a.m. Mrs. Okafor is found on the floor of her bathroom. Her bed alarm was silenced ninety minutes earlier during a two-person linen change and never re-armed. She is not seriously injured. The unit is two staff short. The same thing happened on a different hall in February.
Step 1 · Which paper are you writing?
Step 2 · What evidence do you carry in?
Step 3 · How much of this paper is “I”?
Step 4 · What does the last paragraph do?
The paper you have assembled
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Evidence
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Use of “I”
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Ending
Diary or reflection?
A reflection can be wrong — it can be vague, self-congratulatory, or report an emotion and call that a conclusion. Switch on the three things a reflection must contain and watch the paragraph stop being a diary entry.
Every time you write a sentence about growth, ask immediately: growth from what, to what, detectable how? If you cannot answer all three, you have written a placeholder.